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US Charges 4 in ‘Panama Papers’ Tax Evasion Scheme

WASHINGTON/NEW YORK—U.S. prosecutors announced Dec. 4 that they have charged four people with taking part in a decades-long scheme to evade U.S. taxes that came to light after a massive leak of offshore financial data known as the “Panama Papers.”

Three of the four people have already been arrested, prosecutors said, in the first criminal case brought by U.S. authorities in connection with Mossack Fonseca Co., the Panamanian law firm at the center of the leak.

Harald Joachim von der Goltz, a client of the firm, was arrested in London on Dec. 3; Dirk Brauer, an employee of an asset management company closely tied to the firm, was arrested in Paris on Nov. 15; and Richard Gaffey, a U.S.-based accountant, was arrested in Massachusetts on Dec. 4, according to prosecutors.

The fourth defendant, Ramses Owens, was a lawyer at Mossack Fonseca and remains at large, prosecutors said. The law firm shut down